UN chief 'deeply troubled' by reports Israel using AI to identify Gaza targets
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday expressed serious concern over reports that Israel was using artificial intelligence to identify targets in Gaza.
Guterres said that he was "deeply troubled by reports that the Israeli military's bombing campaign includes Artificial Intelligence as a tool in the identification of targets, particularly in densely populated residential areas, resulting in a high level of civilian casualties."
"No part of life and death decisions which impact entire families should be delegated to the cold calculation of algorithms," he said.
08 April 2024, 19:40
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“No part of life and death decisions which impact entire families should be delegated to the cold calculation of algorithms,” Guterres said, citing a report by +972 Magazine, which revealed on Wednesday that the Israeli military used a AI-generated “kill list” system known as Lavender to direct its mass bombardment of Gaza.
The program had little to no human oversight, with officers reportedly “rubber stamping” the machine’s decisions to authorize the bombings of the homes of suspected militants in the Strip.
08 April 2024, 19:40
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“We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity,” an anonymous Israeli intelligence officer told the magazine. “On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”
Other sources told the outlet that “for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was" deemed "permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians,” with that number growing to “more than 100 civilians” in some cases if the target was a senior Hamas official.
